Former United States Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones has recalled the bitter, sniping campaign, which greeted her Winter Games selection before hailing the 'wolf pack' mentality of her new bobsleigh team-mates.

The 31-year-old Jones only took up the sport after the 2012 London Olympics and her nomination sparked widespread rumours that she was picked for her good looks and her high-profile Twitter account, which has 377,000 followers.

"I was thrown under the bus so many times," an emotional Jones said in Sochi on Monday. "But the bobsleigh team accepted me, lifted me up and comforted me.

"I got tired of the rumours. Even one of the girls who is an alternate with the team said that everything had been taken out of context.

"The bobsleigh team accepted me, lifted me up and comforted me."

Lolo Jones

"I was voted onto the team. I'd be happy if having Twitter followers got me to Rio for the 2016 Olympics but that is not the way it works."

Jones, who will be the brakewoman in the two-woman bobsleigh event, praised her new team-mates for their support in the wake of her disappointing performance at the London Olympics where she was fourth.

The two-time world indoor hurdles champion had also been seventh in Beijing in 2008 after clipping the final hurdle while leading the field.

"After London, I arrived at the Olympic training centre at Lake Placid. I was overweight and depressed. I had put too much into London and didn't know how to pick myself up.

"The girls didn't know me but Jaz (team-mate Jazmine Fenlator) really helped me. She joked, 'I thought you were a distance runner. Girl, did they photoshop your pictures.' I soon held my head high. It was a fresh start for me."

Jones has had to bulk up for Sochi with her role as a brakewoman to utilise her natural speed and sprinter's strength and poise to give the pilot that crucial, leading edge.

"It can take four years to become a driver of a bob," she said.

"It's the same with hurdling. But you can come in as a sprinter after a year and that's the same as bob.

"Fast is fast and power is power."

Williams adds to track presence in Sochi

The US is only one of two nations to have qualified three teams for the event in Sochi and Jones is accompanied by another former track star in Lauryn Williams, the 100m silver medallist at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Williams too is a brakewoman, the 30-year-old having switched over from a track and field career that also included the 2005 world championship in the 100m, as well as a gold in the 4x100m at the London Olympics.

Jones and Williams are not the only former track and field athletes competing in the bobsleigh Sochi, with two-time 400m hurdles world champion Jana Pittman representing Australia.

Pittman will team up with Astrid Radjenovic, having only taken up the sport in 2012, and the pair have posted encouraging results on the World Cup circuit with a 12th placing in St Moritz in January the highlight.

The 31-year-old won gold on the track at the world titles in Paris in 2003 and Osaka 2007.

Her best result at the Summer Olympics was a fifth in the 400m hurdles final in Athens in 2004, while she also competed in Sydney four years earlier.

Pittman also achieves the same feat of countryman Paul Narracott, who contested the sprints at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and the two-man bobsleigh in the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville.